Men In A Mining Camp –
A tale by N.E. Gledhill
This ‘Ripping Yarn’ from the pen of N E Gledhill is kindly shared by his Great Nephew Allen Gledhill with thanks:
As soon as I had explored the empty, hollow-sounding rooms of our new house in Boulder, I saw with delight that a huge drain passed right by the side fence, and, following a winding course for about a mile, carried the town’s overflow of water to the bush. Many a time afterward I walked a mile to sail improvised boats in it. It was then dry, but the month was December. I eyed its bed where it wound beneath a bridge, past a queer little tumble-down camp by its right bank, and on until it spread itself into a vast sheet out of which peeped only an occasional Spinifex.
There was something decidedly fascinating about that lonely camp. It was the only one between the outskirts of the town proper, and the edge of the bush, and I decided to investigate. So it was that, before many weeks had passed, the hut was more familiar to me than my own house, the untidy backyard was my playground, and a new figure had intruded to dominate the impressions of my childhood.
When first I saw him he was seated on his back doorstep with a dog beside him. Squatting around, with arms circling their knees, some stretched on their stomachs, chins in hands, were boys, all about my own age, watching intently as they listened to him wheedle “Two Little Girls in Blue” from the folds of an old concertina. That was the first step, and in a short time, I too became one of his circle of listeners.
“Yorkie”, they called him, although nobody seemed to know why. Here he lived between his thatched sheds and his camstoned shack with all the quiet unconcern of a hermit.
The yard gave the only evidence of work about the place. Saplings, dried and grey, formed the fence posts, they constituted the stables, they supported the camp, and they lay in scattered heaps by the side of two tip-drays. So Yorkie was a wood chopper! Now I could understand the presence of that beautiful grey stallion in the yard. He had always seemed to me too good for, and out of place among his tumble-down surroundings. We would stand around and watch, or give Yorkie a hand to catch and harness him, and in return for helping he would call us to the doorstep and play us a tune on the concertina.
The little camp which had once so interested me now grew vulgarly familiar. I forgot to notice its list to leeward, and the dislodged sheet of roof iron overlapping the side seemed the most natural thing in the world.
Yet why it was never repaired had struck me as peculiar, and I determined to seek the family opinion on it. The reply came as a thunderbolt. “He doesn’t care, he drinks.” A lump rose in my throat, and I left the table striving hard to keep back the tears that welled in my eyes. It was true — I knew it. But I hated them for telling me, hated to think I could offer no word in his defense.
Pulling on a pair of sandals, and tucking under my arm a box of tobacco tags that he had collected for me, I crept out and along the drain to where I could see the camp standing out like a blot in the moonlight. I would cry to him and ask him to promise me he would drink no more because they talked about him. I supposed he would laugh. “Tell Martha.” As he always did; but I clenched my fists and walked on, determined.
The blind was drawn, but I could see a light streaked along the edge of the window, and I timidly pushed open the back door. An old mattress lay stretched upon the floor. Beside it stood a chair (the only article of furniture in the room except for a cloth-covered kerosene case) and on it, stuck in the lid of a circular tobacco tin, was a half-burnt candle. There were old clothes everywhere.
Gradually my eyes became accustomed to the semi-darkness; and as I peered, I made out a crouched form kneeling by the window. His back was to me, and as the candlelight fell upon his bowed head, the flickering flame threw fantastic figures on the wall before him. The accumulated dust of days seemed on his hands and feet as the toes peeped, not too shyly, through holes in his boots. I could see that it was Yorkie. He was whispering something and his voice seemed weak and terribly strange. He was praying! I stopped where I stood, afraid to move; and as I listened, the name “Martha” glided from his tongue. Martha — to whom he always referred us when we plied him with ridiculous questions. I did not understand. There was a slight movement as the dog, curled up on a coat in the corner, snapped at a gyrating fly, and, backing up to the door, I pulled it gently after me.
………………………………………
The next time I saw him he was “doing the block”, hands thrust deep in his trouser pockets, hat tilted on the back of his head, and whistling a tune to his own satisfaction. His insignificant little terrier trotted at his heels.
I knew where he was going. It was Saturday night when the Salvation Army blazed its way into financial assistance under some hotel verandah. Yorkie never missed it. Standing behind the circle, sucking away at an eternal cherrywood, the dog asleep at his feet, he would hang upon every note, always joining in the hymns that he had learned by heart, and often, if the “spirit” moved, conducting then through their pieces. Then, when they dispersed, off to do a few more rounds of the block, and, perhaps, wave a “good-night” to us if we were lucky enough to catch his eye.
He had always carefully saved for us the tags from his tobacco tins – in fact, I shall never be sure he did not make a habit of collecting them to pass them on. He hated to have to tell any of us he had none. Knowing this, we would watch for him coming, and conceal ourselves in the different shop doorways along the street. Then, as Yorkie approached, the nearest would strut out with —I smile when I think of it —” Got any tags, Yorkie?”
Through every pocket in his old suit, his searching fingers would travel until they reached the last. Then a negative nod and earnest: “No, but I’ll save ’em for you, though” and on until the next stopped him. Again the query, again the search, and the answer. I have seen ten of us hanging on the assurance of Yorkie’s promise in the length of a block.
Yet he never lost his temper: a smile and a nod were the least he ever gave. I remember playing around an old battery after the men had ceased work and coming across a whole tin of perfectly good tobacco. Surreptitiously, I picked it up, felt the weight, and put it in my pocket with the one thought; Yorkie! My legs would not carry me quickly enough over the two miles to his camp. And then—the proudest moment of my life—I handed him the tin and waited. Yorkie put his hand in his pocket, looked stealthily around, and thrust something into my palm. Two tags! My fingers closed on the precious things as Yorkie swore me to secrecy.
“Don’t tell Reggie,” he whispered, “it’s his turn an’ course he won’t like it.”
I never breathed a word; but it puzzled me years later to hear others relate how they, too, had received these extra favours and had, even so, been sworn to silence. And then one night I was struggling through some lessons, with the family seated around the other end of the table chatting generally. Suddenly my father spoke: “I believe that old chap Yorkie died this morning.”
The pen dropped; the book closed. I thought the world had fallen around me. No concertina; no bad whistling.
I seized my tin of tags, slipped out through the yard and along the drain until I could see—for the first time it frightened me— the ugly black blind drawn across the window. The camp seemed lonely and deserted. Bootless, I turned over the bridge and, crying to myself, trudged along the gravel footpath, sifting through my fingers handfuls of the coloured tags and listening to them tinkle in the tin—worthless things.
Raising my arm, I scattered them far as I could along the drain and ran. I had grown old in a day.
Moya Sharp
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